A:EftP Questions about hit percentage

Recommended Posts

Hi. Love the game. Just getting into it and finding my way. I've scoured FAQs and strategy guides after a couple of restarts but still have questions and I'd like to confirm some details.

1. Is there any way to see a character's total to-hit percentage in-game? I mean instead of doing the math manually. This would include increases from stats, traits, and items against penalties from dual wielding and certain gear. I'm assuming the answer is no, because afaik to-hit changes per encounter and depends on the enemy's level and evasion score.

2. Why pump primary stats exclusively? Each point in a primary stat lends +5% to-hit. So then wouldn't toons hit the cap at either 19-20 points (or 23-24 for dual wielders)? I know there's a hard 5% chance to miss and I understand that these stats also increase damage (but I don't know by how much so I can't tell where the acceptable tradeoffs are). From a to-hit perspective, it seems like past 19-24, you could spread out points and create a hybrid, ie give fighters a boost in intelligence to cast more spells or give magic users more ranged physical damage and evasion, etc.

3. Is the Dual Wielding skill useless? It offers +2% damage and +2% hit, but you gotta spend 2 skill points to get that: 1 in Quick Action, 1 in Dual Wielding. From the guides, Quick Action is a mediocre bonus. Wouldn't I be better served by putting those 2 skill points into the Melee Skill and Blademaster, for a total of +4% damage and +2% hit?

4. How much of a to-hit penalty should a melee character take on from gear? Most of the early stuff is -5% to-hit. Some armor is greater than that (-10% to -15%). 1 piece? 2? More? I want to max my defense without noticeable missing more often. Do these penalties stack with the penalty from dual wielding? Is there a cap to it?

5. Is the Sure Hand trait better than the Ambidextrous and Dual Wielding traits? Sure Hand boosts melee hit by 5%. Ambidextrous is only 3%. Dual Wielding is another 2%. I'm confused on this because the guides I've read didn't mention Sure Hand at all. I'm not sure if you can get additional levels of Sure Hand like you can with the other two but at first glance it seems the better choice, especially because it's not limited to a specific playstyle. (ie, I still get the boost if I swap in a shield.)

6. Why do most guides stop pumping Melee skills at around 10-12 points when Adrenaline Rush requires 15? I know you can get bonuses from items and pay to train skills later in the game. But I'm not sure when that is, or where to go to do it. I'm confused on this because there's a sorta skill point deadzone around character level 10-12, when it might be too early to pay for training and I don't have all the gear bonuses yet. It seems like a more straightforward approach would be to simply pump Melee skills to 15, which would allow Adrenaline Rush earlier.

7. When should magic users begin putting points into Melee and Ranged skills to get Adrenaline Rush? Even with gear bonuses and paid training, this looks like a minimum 10 point sink for a single Battle Discipline. I take it on good faith that Adrenaline Rush is just that good for magic users, but I don't want to gimp my spellcasting by putting points into Melee skills too early or wait too long and only have access to Adrenaline Rush at the very end of the game.

Thanks for any responses in advance! (And I admit I may be over thinking some or all of this.)

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

1. No, there isn't. As you mentioned, your actual to-hit chances depend on enemy stats, so the ability to see your theoretical base to-hit chances would be rather pointless.

2. Since enemy stats and encumbering equipment both decrease your to-hit chances, you will need a lot of Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence to reach the 95% to-hit chance cap, especially on higher difficulties. 19–24 points is not enough when fighting later enemies, at least not on Torment difficulty.

Quoting Slarty's min-maxing guide, "the 4-stat system means you can't have secondary attacks; they will be useless. Everyone has to pick melee or magic and stick with it." As such, you will not benefit much from increasing a warrior's Intelligence or a spell-caster's Dexterity. There's no need to place every available point into your primary offensive attributes, but any additional points are probably best spent increasing your Endurance.

3. Dual Wielding is not a useless skill, but both Blademaster and Lethal Blow are better for increasing a warrior's damage output. Since maximizing those two skills and Parry (and every warrior wants Parry) already consumes almost all of your available skill points, there won't be many points left over for Dual Wielding. Also, if you want to make a warrior as bulky as possible (which is a good idea on higher difficulties), you should maximize both Parry and Resistance. Doing this takes so many skill points that low-priority skills like Dual Wielding will have to be ignored.

4. As long as you place most of the available points into your primary offensive attributes, hitting enemies should not be much of an issue. I personally find even slightly sub-optimal to-hit chances very annoying, so my recommendation is to wear as heavy armor as you can while retaining the maximum to-hit chance.

All to-hit penalties stack, and the total penalty has no cap.

5. Sure Hand is not a good trait, since it does not increase your damage at all, unlike Ambidextrous and Dual Blade Mastery. Sure Hand only increases your to-hit chance by 5%, making it strictly worse than a single point of Strength, which does the same thing and also increases your damage. Maximizing to-hit chances is important, but you don't need Sure Hand to do that.

6. Many guides are written with min-maxers in mind. Since Melee Weapons and Pole Weapons are mediocre skills for characters that actually use those weapons and completely worthless skills for everyone else, you will optimally want to place as few skill points into those skills as possible. Thanks to equipment bonuses and paid training, buying 8 points of Melee Weapons (or Pole Weapons) with skill points is enough to maximize Hardiness (which is an excellent skill for everyone) and to reach Adrenaline Rush.

If you don't care about fully optimizing your party, increasing your Melee Weapons (or Pole Weapons) to level 15 with skill points alone is not terribly wasteful, but there are better ways to spend the extra 7 skill points.

7. This is really a matter of personal preference. I like to place 1 point into Mage Spells (or Priest Spells) and 1 point into either Melee Weapons or Hardiness after every level-up in the early game, until both Melee Weapons and Hardiness reach level 8. This strikes a nice balance between increasing damage and bulk and reaching Adrenaline Rush ASAP. Of course, you might occasionally want to place points into Tool Use or the Lore skills instead.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

2. In Crystal Souls and Ruined World, humans can reach a high even spread in all four stats thanks to the extra traits. In my recent playthrough of Ruined World, my two fighters final stats were roughly 30/20/20/20 (traits included), and I found the increased initiative, mental resistance and HP very useful compared to previous playthroughs where I had put all points into Strength. My wizard and priest mainly focused on Intelligence, with about five extra points and traits in Endurance, and five points/traits in Dexterity and Strength respectively so they could pitch in with bow and sword, particularly early on in the game (which worked quite well on Hard and later Torment. My fighters had no trouble at all hitting everything, but the priest and wizard had trouble hitting stronger enemies after the middle of the game (but by then they had plenty of Spell Points and strong spells).

3. I did some testing and it turns out that every point of Quick Action adds two points to your initiative, while each experience level and point of Dexterity add one point each to initiative. Striking first is good, since it normally allows you to take out at least one or two opponents, which means fewer opponents to strike back, particularly in battles that take place outdoors or in large spaces where the enemies can surround you. Dual Wielding, however, is less efficient than Blademaster, so I don't put points in it until the end of the game when everything else has been maxed out. Also, I have my swordsman use a shield until his skills and stats are high enough to dual wield effectively, which is somewhere around level 15 to 20, I believe.

4. I find that quite a few non-body armor pieces, like greaves and gauntlets, add more penalties than they are worth compared to non-penalty pieces like gloves and pants, especially once you start finding enchanted items.

5. I find that the best traits are the stat traits, Negotiatior, Nimble Fingers and Sage Lore. Keep in mind that sometimes it might be worth saving up a couple of levels so you can pass the level requirement for certain traits (like saving your level 4 trait until you're level 5 for the second Nimble Fingers).

6. After a certain point, putting a skill point in Blademaster yields more damage than a point in Melee/Pole Weapons. You can calculate this point by adding your total damage dice (easily done by checking the weapon) and checking if one point of Blademaster (+3%) gives you an additional damage dice (or more). I forget the exact numbers, but I think the percentage bonus surpasses the straight additional damage dice around 30-35 damage dice (around 10-15 Strength and 10 Melee/Pole Weapons, including your weapon bonus dice).

7. If you put at least 8 points in Melee/Pole Weapons, your magic user can get 12 Hardiness by buying an additional 2 points in the weapon skill. Then you can buy another 5 points in the other skills for Adrenaline Rush.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

3. Dual Wielding is useful after mid game when you can get items that add to it instead of using skill points. The main trick is that the primary weapon is a flaming blade, frozen blade, or warp beast blade to get bonus damage in addition to the regular physical damage to compensate for lower normal damage.

This still doesn't beat magical attacks, but for a single or few target encounter why waste spell energy. Plus the character still makes a meat shield.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Keep in mind this thread is about AEFTP. While A2 and A3 are very similar, they are not identical when it comes to benchmarks for levelling.

Also, Minion, your damage formulae are incomplete. You have left out both the 1 "free" attack die, and the extra attack dice equal to [level / 2]. Additionally, you have neglected to check for other percentile damage boosts, which are all summed together. It is not hard to reach +50% for example, at which point that +3% for Blademaster only increases your total damage by an effective +2%.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Your replies really helped clear up a few aspects of the game I didn't understand. So now that the penny has dropped, I upped the difficulty from normal to hard, and I'm having even more fun playing this terrific game.